Cowboy's daughter Sun Aug 16, 2015 11:50 am
What a despicable place Ukraine has become to live in.
Students hand professor over to security service for making pro-separatist statements
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/students-hand-professor-over-to-security-service-for-making-pro-separatist-statements-395762.html
The peculiar nature of the conflict in Ukraine, which has not officially been declared a war but has now killed nearly 7,000 people, has produced a strange result: an air of suspicion along the front line so strong it prompts ordinary residents to hunt for “separatists” among their own neighbors and friends.
On Aug. 13, the Security Service of Ukraine announced it had issued an official warning to a university professor in the western city of Zhytomyr after his own students ratted him out for expressing support for Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine.
SBU spokeswoman Irina Martynyuk said in a statement that “if (the professor) repeats these actions he will be detained and his actions will be prosecuted under the Criminal Code.”
The grassroots initiative to root out separatist sympathizers is nothing new. Throughout the conflict, the Security Service of Ukraine has regularly announced the detention of residents near the front line who collaborate with separatists, either for monetary gain or for political reasons.
The widespread practice of separatist forces using informants from among the local population has now apparently fueled so much paranoia among ordinary citizens that it has reached the west of the country, hundreds of kilometers from the front.
Alexander Demchenko, the head of the “Stop Separatism” volunteer group, has taken the initiative a step further and begun serving as a go-between for ordinary residents and the SBU.
“People living near the front are often afraid to call the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) or just can’t get through, and some don’t even know where to send such information. My partner and I have been collecting complaints (about separatists) for a year now and passing them on to the SBU,” Demchenko said.
When he first started, he said, most of the calls came from Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv, with several tips a day, whereas now most calls come from Kyiv.
In one case, he said, a man had called to complain about his mother-in-law defending Russia’s actions over dinner.
The SBU has repeatedly encouraged residents to look out for separatist collaborators, offering a hotline for tips and setting up eye-catching billboards in the east. The Donetsk regional police department has joined in and set up a special email tip line as well.
“People of various ages write to us – young people, pensioners,” Natalya Shiman, spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration, was cited as saying by Segodnya.ua.
“Each day we get 3-4 messages. For example, work is now under way to catch a recruiter for the separatists. We learned of this from the driver of a postal truck,” she said, adding that the recruiter had offered money for information on Ukrainian troop movements.
In the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast, billboards and signs line the streets with appeals to residents to watch out for the warning signs of an “ordinary separatist.” They are said to “defile national symbols” and “are awaiting the arrival of the Russian world,” according to the signs, which offer the phone number of a hotline to call should you encounter such a person.
The signs politely inform passersby that collaborating with separatist forces will get you between 7-12 years in prison.
Not everyone is supportive of the widespread initiative to track down separatist collaborators, however.
In an editorial published by Inforesist.org on Aug. 14, Semyon Gluzman, a former Soviet dissident and the head of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association, warned that people could abuse the hotline to settle personal scores.
“With us, separatism is starting to be rooted out and persecuted using the recipe of Yozhov and Beria. (Nikolai Yozhov and Lavrentiy Beria, two heads of the Soviet secret police under dictator Josef Stalin). Publicly calling for the population to spot those who are not content (with the current situation). I would like to ask one question: what percentage of people living in shelled, starving and socially deprived villages in Donbas are content? And what percentage of the so-called content people wouldn’t use the opportunity to tattle on “separatists” to settle scores with their previous enemies, their annoying neighbor or ex-husband who doesn’t want to pay alimony?”
Deputy police chief of Donetsk Oblast Ilya Kiva, who in comments to the Kyiv Post described separatism as a “plague that needs to be stamped out before it spreads further,” refused to say whether the police tip line had ever been abused by local residents seeking to settle scores.
“Of course, it’s human nature that these things would happen. I wouldn’t rule out that it is happening. But in each case the information provided is thoroughly and carefully investigated to ensure that the system is not abused,” Kiva said.
He declined to specify whether or not police had documented any such cases since starting the tip line.
A request for comment sent to the SBU on whether or not its tip line had ever been abused was not immediately answered.
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